The sound of footfalls descending the steps caused my heart to skip a beat. Pausing, I closed my eyes, sucked in my breath and held it, steeling myself as I did so for what promised to be fresh round of close scrutiny. This would be followed, no doubt, by a less then subtle litany of carefully worded ‘Fatherly’ advice. Mind you, it could be worse, far worse. As Craig likes to remind me, things are always darkest before they go totally black.

Putting the cereal box down, I stepped away from the counter and for the umpteenth time that morning, looked down at the uniform I was wearing. The crisp white, short sleeved cotton blouse was snuggly tucked into my pleated plaid skirt.

We will interrupt this story for a brief panic attack.

God! My skirt! I was wearing a skirt, a skirt that was mine, all mine. “The horror. The horror,” Colonel Kurtz muttered as napalm lit the pre-dawn darkness.

But I digress. Back to the story.

So there I was, standing at the kitchen counter with nothing to defend myself with except a box of cereal, a spoon and my wits as the Lord High Executioner himself drew nigh. Though I expect the General would have preferred it if the afore mentioned skirt was a longer, its hem fell exactly where the school’s guidelines required it to. Mind you, he was anything but old fashioned. He left that to his father, the Prince of Darkness in this narrative. Nor was Dad a newly converted adherent of those precepts of Islamic hijab governing female attire. I am of the opinion that quite the opposite is true judging from the amount of time it took him to dispose of the girly magazines he routinely confiscated from under Craig’s mattress. The answer was far more basic. You see, the General was even less used to seeing me in a skirt than I was wearing one.

It wasn’t until I arrived in Virginia that I gave any serious thought to how much of an impact my actions would have on Dad and his career. Until then, I had been so focused on dealing with my own concerns that I all but forgot just what this would mean to a man like him. You see, not only did the General have to come to terms with what I was doing as any primary parental unit facing this sort of thing must, he would have to deal with the opinions of superiors, peers and subordinates. With precious few exceptions, they were fellow warriors, Alpha males who believed an officer’s true measure was reflected by everything he did, on duty and off.

This philosophy was especially true when it came to an officer’s children. He never told us as much, at least not directly. The General was far too subtle for that. He preferred to use the indirect approach, or as Craig put it after reading one too many articles in Military Review, ‘Asymmetric Parenting.’ Whenever he felt the need to remind us our behavior reflected upon him over dinner or during long drive he’d find a way of telling us how Colonel so-and-so’s son had screwed the pooch, causing his father all kinds of problems, or how humiliating it was for the post commander whenever his daughter got it in her head to go parading about in outfits that left precious little to the imagination. Naturally Dad always ended these tales of dependents gone wild by relating how a friend of his told him if the boy or girl in question was his, they would A – ground the miscreant for eternity plus six, B – ensure they wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month or C – find themselves spending their Christmas vacation learning how to walk again. Now whether these friends Dad spoke of were real, or simply a way of allowing us to have a glimpse of a side of him that earned him the reputation as being a real piss-bringer was something those of us who comprised his household troop were never able to discern. What we did take away from these morality tales was the message they were meant to impart; i.e. don’t mess around.

I expect had I been stricken with an incurable form of cancer or had suddenly developed an extreme case of tourettes, no one would have thought any differently of the General. Unfortunately, in the eyes of an institution that was still struggling to come to terms with its transition from a lean, mean fighting machine to a bastion of cutting edge political correctness, being the father of a son who wanted to be a girl ranked right up there with having a child graduate with honors from a Pakistani madrassa. Having become something of a self centered twit since proclaiming ‘I am woman, hear me roar,’ all of this only became painfully clear to me as I was being in-processed at Fort Myer where, due to his duty assignment we, Dad and I, were assigned quarters.

Throughout that nerve-racking ordeal no one said anything, at least not to our faces as Dad walked me through the chore of having a new dependent ID issued to me using my new name. They didn’t need to. I could see it in their faces as they went about scanning the paperwork before them. Without fail, their eyes would come to a screeching halt when they realized Richard needed to be changed to Rachel. In the same way a person finds they are unable to take their eyes off a train wreck, I would watch as they re-read the documents before them just to make sure we hadn’t inadvertently made an error when filling out the paperwork.

Next came ‘The Look.’ You know the one. First they’d glance up at me to see how they failed to miss spotting what they now suspected was Tinker Bell’s big sister, or brother, or whatever. Next they would turn their attention on Dad as if trying to figure out how an officer like him could possible allow his son to do such a thing. As was his wont, the General returned their gob smacked expression with one Steve, Craig and I had grown up with, one that asked ‘Is there something you’d like to say?’ in a tone of voice that made it clear we didn’t dare do so if we wished to see another sunrise. When it finally became clear they weren’t doing double duty in the Twilight Zone, the admin puke would once more turn their gaze onto me.

As unnerving as it this all was for me, I could not even begin to imagine what it was like for Dad, for he knew how the Army rumor mill worked. His love for me had not changed, not one bit, a point he reassured me of whenever he saw my spirits begin to flag. Unfortunately, there was little I could do or say that would boost his spirits when, after a long day, he returned home and found I was still there, budding perky little breasts that not even one of Steve’s size gigantic airborne Tee shirts could hide. Like him, I knew word of what I was doing would radiate out like ripples in a pond. It would not take long before everyone who mattered to Dad was aware his youngest son was now a butterfly. In time this news would reach the furthest shore before being reflected back to us in ways neither could predict.

That was why I was standing there at the counter, holding my breath while the General slowly made his way downstairs, along the hall and into the kitchen of the four bedroom quarters we were living in. Though we had each did our best in our own ways to deal with the stress my actions had resulted in by whistling our way past the graveyard, we both were natives of Realville. We knew it would be a long, long time, if ever, that something approaching what had once passed for normal in our lives would be restored.

When I heard the footfalls stop, I couldn’t keep from looking over my shoulder to where Dad was, standing in the doorway staring at me. When he realized I had caught him doing so, he averted his own gaze in a vain effort to hide the ruddiness rising in his cheeks. Not knowing what else to do, he scratched the back of his head before making his way over to the coffee maker where he took up a mug I had dug out of the cardboard packing box they’d been shipped in and poured himself a cup.

Having a father who was an infantry officer did have its advantages, particularly when it came to cooking. So long as it was warm and relatively free of dust, Dad would eat just about anything I put before him, which was good since making coffee not exactly my strong suit. As far as he was concerned, it only needed to be black, hot and plentiful.

Hoorah!

Deciding I needed to do something to break the tension, I drew myself up and spun around, which turned out to be a mistake, for it caused my pleated skirt to flare out, causing him to wince. In the week I’d been here I had gone out of my way keep from flaunting my new found femininity in his face. If truth be known, this wasn’t all that difficult. Despite Gram’s efforts to mold me into a fashionable and demur young girl, the best she was able to achieve in what little time we had over the summer was something that came across as a socially awkward tomboy. On those rare occasions when she felt I needed to make the effort to publically sprout my new found butterfly wings, it took a fair amount of brow beating and more than a little cajoling on her part to get me into a skirt or dress, items she had purchased for me which somehow always managed to find their way to the back of my closet, a location she had taken to calling the Bermuda Triangle.

Dad, bless his Kevlar coated heart, didn’t even make the effort, not at first. In the beginning he was content to allow me to dress myself in a manner that was pretty much nondescript. The first time I did make an exception to my self imposed policy of wearing things that were gender neutral after arriving in Virginia was when he and I went to Saint David’s to enroll me in school. Believe me when I tell you, on that day I felt like an unwanted dog who’d been dumped in a Chinese neighborhood on market day. Judging by the way he kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, I expect the same applied to the General.

Rather then sending me to the public school in Arlington, we had both come to the conclusion on our own that it would be best if I attended a private school. It was an idea I had initially broached while we were hashing out the details of how we were going to make my whole boy to girl thing work. Without batting an eye, he fully embraced the idea since it would minimize my interaction with the children of other military personnel and provide me with what he hoped would be a safer, more secure environment. Expense was not an issue. With Craig now safely tucked away at West Point, the money Dad had socked away for his education was now available for my high school education. What was an issue, not surprisingly, was my current status, seeing how for the foreseeable future physically I would be neither fish nor foul.

Back to ‘Rachel does St. David’s.’

Dad and I went flat out in assembling my scholastic resume and preparing for the mandatory interview with the school’s admissions officer. Together we dissected the school’s web site and admission standards, gathering up all the documentation they required and then some. Included in this package were signed copies of letters from both the physician I had been seeing in Cheyenne and Dr. Wheeler, notarized documents that attested to the fact that I was a certified, grade A, government inspected transsexual. By the time we had finished it was all very Hooah, impressive and, as it turned out, very necessary.

Academically I passed muster with ease. Even if there had been a problem in that department, I expect my father’s rank would have been sufficient to earn me a provisional bye, for St. David’s, the school we had settled on, made a point of boosting on its web site and in its literature to the parents of perspective students it recruited the best the brightest who just so happened to include the pimply faced spawn of senators, congressmen, foreign diplomats and senior government officials. It was when our discussions with the admissions official turned to my ‘unique’ circumstances that we both expected things would become a wee bit dicey.

With that in mind, the day we went for my interview I wore an outfit that was similar to the prescribed uniform female students were required to wear. The only difference was instead of knee socks and Mary Janes, (eww), I wore stockings and a pair of dressy black flats Grams had insisted I buy. I also skipped the makeup. While Dad thought I did it for his sake, if truth be known at this point wearing make up weirded me out, big time.

Still, despite my efforts to keep things toned down, I couldn’t help but notice the look on my father’s face as he stood in the foyer waiting for me to finish dressing and messing with my hair on the day of the interview. As I was descending the stairs, he followed my every move like acquisition radar tracking a target. Not that I can blame him. After all, this was the first time he was seeing his youngest son in a skirt. My shy, innocent response to his scrutiny didn’t help either, for when I finally came up to him and stopped, the redness in my cheeks, the manner with which I averted my eyes and the way I took to nervously fidgeted with the strap of my shoulder bag only served to accentuate the fact that I no longer was his son in the classical sense.

One of the hallmarks of a man like the General is that he instinctively knows what to do in difficult situations. On that occasion, my father reached out, placed the crock of his index finger under my chin and slowly tilted my head back until I was looking up into his eyes. With the best smile he could scrounge up under the circumstances, he asked if I was ready for this.

I may not have been a cookie cutter replica of the General, but I was his child in every way that mattered to the two of us. Returning his forced smile with one of my own, I replied no, but since we were both dressed and had nothing else planned for the rest of the afternoon, we might as well go and see what the good folks at St. David’s had to say.

Hooah!

If the General was harboring any reservations going into the interview with the school’s admissions officer, he kept them to himself. Instead of being skittish, he conducted himself as if having a son who was in the process of becoming his daughter was the most natural thing in the world. This became quite evident whenever the admissions officer paused, hesitated or took to squirming in her seat as people who find themselves in an awkward situation tend to do. Without skipping a beat, at moments like that the General would give her one of those, ‘Is there a problem?’ looks he’s so good at.

Once, when the woman tried to explain the school might not be able to accommodate all my special needs, he opened the manila folder he was holding in his lap, took up one of the school’s slick brochures and turned to a dog-eared page. Without preamble, he began to read from it. “St. David is a school dedicated to serving the needs of all its students regardless of their race, gender, color, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin.” Looking up from the brochure, he pinned the admissions officer to the spot with a stare that would have made Darth Vader flinch. “While I will be the first to admit I am still coming to terms with my daughter’s condition,” he continued, “I am quite familiar with equal opportunity policies as well as state and Federal laws governing discrimination. So, unless there is something in my daughter’s academic record or her past conduct that disqualifies her, I don’t see any problems. Do you?”

Whether it was my father’s implicit threat or the look on his face as he leaned forward and fixed the admissions officer with a glacial stare, the poor woman capitulated faster then a Frenchman who’d just heard a band strike up ‘Deutschland uber Alles.’

I was in.

After taking a seat at the kitchen table and enjoying a long, lingering sip of coffee while doing his best to keep from looking over to where I was pouring milk over my cereal but failing miserably, Dad broke the awkward silence. “Why so early?”

I waited until I’d taken my place across from him before answering. “New student orientation, remember?” I muttered wistfully without looking up from my bowl of cereal.

“Oh yeah, right,” he mumbled in response before turning his attention back to his coffee while madly scrambling for something to say that would keep us from once more lapsing into another protracted silence. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off?” he finally asked, peeking up at me.

“I’ll be fine, Dad. Really. Besides, do you think for one minute I’m going to pass up the chance to drive Craig’s car every chance that comes my way?” I quickly added in an effort to lighten the mood.

Pausing with his cup halfway to his mouth, he grunted. “Just make sure you don’t do anything dumb that gives the post’s MPs or any of Arlington’s finest an excuse to pull you over. That restricted driver’s license from Wyoming you managed to talk your grandmother into allowing you to apply for may not impress them.”

Unable to help myself, I gave my father a wink. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“You be careful, you hear?”

“What? And spoil my first day at school?” I replied glibly.

That’s when it happened. Out of the clear blue the General set his coffee cup down, reached across to me, and placed his hands over the one I had on the table next to my cereal bowl. Giving it a gentle squeeze, he gazed in my eyes for the longest time. “Rachel, promise me you’ll be careful.”

He was no longer talking about my driving. Whenever he was bidding Steve farewell before he shipped out and, I expect, as Craig was preparing to head off to West Point, Dad would grasp their shoulder. With a whispered intensity that spoke of a deep-rooted love for his departing child, he’d tell them to be careful. Nothing more needed to be said. And while the sentiment he was expressing to me at the moment was no different, it was the manner with which he was doing so that caused me to wonder if, in his own way, he was blessing the journey I was about to embark upon.

Now if that turned out to be the case, it was most definitely hooah, all the way and then some.

Nancy Cole
a.k.a. HW Coyle